


Edification

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:55:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief list of things that Alfons can live without.</p><p>[Spoilers for '03/Cos.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edification

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InkdropFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkdropFox/gifts).



> For Sam! ♥

Alfons misses a lot of things about the world before the War.  He misses money that actually meant something.  He misses strangers smiling in the streets—everyone is closed-faced now, blanched and graying in their grimness, with all their secrets shuttered tight behind their eyes.  He misses how tall people used to stand, before the weight, before the worries.  He misses joviality; he misses patriotism; he misses pride.  He misses fire-colored flags snapping brightly out the windows.  He misses coffee—good coffee, Italian coffee, coffee so rich and fine that you could _almost_ believe you were sitting at a little café on a cobblestone street in Rome with history breathing down your neck, even if really you were curled up in an attic room with a book about stars only slightly less accessible than Italy. And he misses taking his own existence for granted.

But what’s complicated is that life is not discrete.  It doesn’t come in parcels; it can’t be rated on a scale, by a checklist, one-to-one.  It’s a tangle.  It’s a maelstrom.  It’s a mess.

And it’s wonderful.

There are also a lot of things Alfons doesn’t miss about life before.  He doesn’t miss the quiet.  He doesn’t miss the loneliness. He doesn’t miss the slow, relentless countdown of the clock.

Ed is obtrusive—Ed is _loud_.  Ed snores; Ed snickers; Ed mutters like a madman.  Ed drops things; the volume of Ed’s voice is directly proportional to his intellectual excitement; Ed’s constantly banging his prosthetic elbow into walls and cursing in languages that don’t quite sound familiar. Ed is boisterous, and brazen, and unafraid.

Well, that’s not entirely true.  Ed is afraid of one thing, and one thing only: himself.

And perhaps existentialist literature.

“You ever read any Kafka?” he asks, completely out of the blue, while they’re lying on the floor one evening.

Alfons cranes his neck a little, but it seems to be impossible to look Ed in the face and rest one’s head on the small of his back at the same time.  “What brought this on?”

“There was a copy of _The Metamorphosis_ in the waiting room at the doctor’s this morning,” Ed says, turning a page of whatever advanced mathematics text he’s reading now.  “I really don’t get it, though.  He just… _randomly_ … turns into a giant roach.  It doesn’t make sense.”

“I think that’s the point,” Alfons says.

Ed snorts.  “What, that stuff happens for no reason?  To hell with that.”

Alfons supposes that now is as good a time as any for a break from his calculations.  “You think everything happens for a purpose?”

“Not necessarily a _purpose_ ,” Ed says, “but a _reason_.  Coincidence facilitates cause and effect.  I mean, there’s nobody _steering_ , right, but the ship doesn’t budge without wind in the sails.  You don’t just wake up and discover you’re a gigantic vermin-thing.  My suspension of disbelief doesn’t go that far—setting aside the whole theological debate, the kind of drastic reconfiguration of matter that would be required to turn a guy into a bug—”

Alfons cuts in before the impending rant about proboscises or something can gather too much steam.  “You don’t believe in things you can’t explain?”

That gets a low, soft laugh out of Ed.  “Nah.  Not really.  There’s a truth to everything if you know where to look.”

Alfons smiles.  “Then how am I supposed to quantify _you_?”

This laugh is brighter—bright enough to shake Ed’s whole body and bounce Alfons’s head against him.  “Touché.  Guess you could say I’m a big, fat miracle.”

“Let’s be honest, Ed,” Alfons says.  “You’re a rather _small_ miracle, aren’t you?”

Ed’s grin is audible once he’s finished his melodramatic gasp. “You _traitor_.”

“Mmm,” Alfons says, setting his schematics aside in order to stretch, making sure his shoulders rub across Ed’s spine.  “Maybe you should show me who’s boss.”

Alfons has never quite mustered the guts to ask where Ed learned to move like a cat, metal arm and all—in a single smooth motion, he’s flipped them; in another fluid fraction of a second, Alfons’s breath is hitching in his throat, and Ed’s kneeling over him, pinning both his wrists above his head.

“You think so?” Ed asks, eyelashes dipping low.

“Y-yeah,” Alfons says, trying not to let the air catch in his lungs; his old friend the hacking cough isn’t especially romantic.

“I’ll show you _small_ ,” Ed mutters, and before Alfons can say _Well, I can see you right now, can’t I?_ , Ed’s kissing hard at his neck, which tickles him a little and turns him on a lot.

As Ed nips gently, and Alfons arches his back up off the floor to grind their hips together, he thinks that the world he’s got _now_ might just be the best one he’s ever had.


End file.
